Review: A pop star needs a makeover in 'Mother Mary' but one dress keeps getting in the way
This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.
In 2024, Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” used architecture as a metaphor for Hollywood filmmaking itself — the grinding hustle required to craft something epic in scope, infused with a personal story, but ultimately dependent on patrons who might exploit artists rather than support them.One could argue that “Mother Mary” is indie auteur David Lowery’s similar attempt, in that it’s a film that explores the personal hazards of creative collaboration, this time using pop superstardom as a stand-in for playing the Hollywood game.When made on a grand, industrial scale, art requires a team, always with the risk of significant contributors feeling discarded or resentful.
Lowery explores this idea in depth in “Mother Mary,” while suggesting that these same hurt feelings can be a source of creative energy, pulled from the heart, slapped on a table and shaped into something beautiful.It’s a process that is messy, human and complicated.“Mother Mary” is a phantasmagoric fever dream of a gothic pop opera, but it is also a single-setting conversation movie that pits two of our most mesmerizing actors against each other in a verbal pas de deux of wordy accusation and buried betrayals.
Entertainment & Arts International music icon Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) shows up at the English estate of famed fashion designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), her former costume designer.Mary is bedraggled and wet, begging for a gown for a comeback performance in a few days.
Despite Sam’s simmering anger at the way things ended between them, she drags Mary into an old barn for a fitting, where they will work out their issues, whether Mary wants to or not.There, Sam unleashes reams upon reams of pent-up monologuing about their past while a teary Mary fills in a few gaps.We frequently cut away to concert performances and flashbacks that the women watch like stage plays in the barn.
...